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Summary
Summary
Drawing upon oral history transcripts, archival correspondence, and unpublished family memoirs, independent scholar Baldwin describes Henry Ford's rabid anti-Semitism and the Jewish American community's response to him. Topics include Ford's hateful essays in The Dearborn Independent, his publication of treatises on the alleged international Jewish banking conspiracy, and his impact on the anti- Semitic movement in Europe in the years leading up to World War II. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author Notes
Neil Baldwin is executive director of the National Book Foundation and the critically-acclaimed author of Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God; Edison: Inventing the Century; Man Ray: American Artist; and To All Gentleness: William Carlos Williams, the Doctor-Poet. He is also the co-editor of a collection of interviews with authors about their working lives, The Writing Life
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The strength of this biography lies in context: by emphasizing Ford's background, influences and the world around the auto manufacturer, Baldwin (executive director of the National Book Foundation and author of Edison: Inventing the Century, etc.) brings a fresh approach to what has long been known about one of America's most famous anti-Semites. In the book's first part, Baldwin focuses on the climate of intellectual anti-Semitism that Ford experienced as a child and young adult and how these likely shaped his views about Jews. By the end of WWI, "Jews hatred was now an entrenched, permanent stain on Ford's psyche," which consistently teetered on the brink of sanity. Ford, who was raised on a farm, believed that Jews were responsible for the evils of modern cities and America's interventionist foreign policy, even as he remained friends with individual Jews. And as Baldwin disturbingly shows, Ford also put his twisted ideals into action by creating an anti-Semitic newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. (In this way, Ford was unlike Thomas Edison, whom Baldwin describes as a passive anti-Semite.) But Baldwin is not content to depict Ford's anti-Semitism and his cadre of like-minded people he also describes attempts to curb Ford's effect on society. After a lawsuit by a Jew maligned in the Independent, Ford eventually apologized with the help of Jewish organizations (whether or not that apology was sincere remains an open question). As he does elsewhere in the book, Baldwin probes the story behind this apology. His concise look at an organized American Jewry beginning to flex its muscles makes this excellent biography a tale of changing American ethnic relations. Illus. (Nov.) Forecast: The Jewish audience is a lock for this, but it should also appeal more broadly to students of American history and inter-ethnic relations. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Drawing on archival correspondence, family memoirs, and historical transcripts, Baldwin presents a comprehensive portrait of Henry Ford, the billionaire automaker and virulent anti-Semite. Much of the focus is on Ford's personal newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, started in 1919 and published for 91 successive weeks, its only aim being to assail Jews as "a despised race." Baldwin also examines the Jews' complicated dilemma of countering Ford's efforts to spread his anti-Semitic views without adding "fuel to the fire" and coaxing Jewish leaders into making a concerted stand. Baldwin insists that his aim was to set Ford's anti-Semitism in a meaningful context that makes sense at the start of a new century, which he succeeds in doing in this perceptive, balanced book. --George Cohen
Choice Review
Readers will find an interesting portrait of Ford the antisemite that brings together many strands of early-20th-century US culture, including Populism, immigration, and urban industrialization. While many Americans' suspicion of the "new" immigrants arriving after 1880 may be well known, this case study of the role of Ford as American nativist and xenophobe brings larger trends into focus. Among the more revealing details Baldwin presents are conversational snippets recorded by naturalist John Burroughs at one of the famous return-to-nature outings that engaged Ford, Edison, and Firestone. The guests generally shared Ford's obsessive hatred, much to Burrough's consternation. Ford's wealth and fame enabled him to create the Dearborn Independent and staff it with like-minded sycophants. His newspaper became a vehicle to broadcast personal prejudice under the imprimatur of journalistic integrity and introduced the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion to Americans, lending credence to the Russian forgery and ultimately providing "evidence" that the radical Right continues to cite today. Even after Ford's retraction and the paper's demise in 1927, widespread knowledge of his views along with his stature provided credence enough to bolster reactionary movements in the US through the 1940s. General and undergraduate collections. J. Kleiman University of Wisconsin Colleges
Library Journal Review
Baldwin, who has written biographies of William Carlos Williams and Man Ray, first encountered the strident anti-Semitism of Thomas Alva Edison's protage and friend Henry Ford while researching Edison: Inventing the Century. Unwilling to write a full-scale biography on the industrial mogul, Baldwin presents the reader with a meticulously researched account of Ford's deep-seated antipathy toward Jews. Baldwin uses oral history transcripts, correspondence, and family memoirs, as well as articles from Ford's newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, to trace early anti-Semitic influences on Ford and follow these through his later years. The industrialist's hatred seemed to rise and fall with the fortunes of the automobile industry. Much more visceral than Albert Lee's Henry Ford and the Jews (1980. o.p.), this is a focused and exacting account of Ford, in particular, but also of anti-Semitism in America at the turn of the last century. Daniel Liestman, Kansas State Univ. Lib., Manhattan (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| 1 McGuffeyland | p. 1 |
| 2 The Great Questions | p. 8 |
| 3 Tin Lizzie | p. 20 |
| 4 The Christian Century | p. 27 |
| 5 Working Man's Friend | p. 36 |
| 6 "I Know Who Caused the War" | p. 48 |
| 7 The Bolshevik Menace | p. 67 |
| 8 Exit Mr. Pipp | p. 92 |
| 9 The Jewish Question | p. 108 |
| 10 Retaliation | p. 134 |
| 11 The Talmud-Jew | p. 152 |
| 12 Heinrich Ford | p. 172 |
| 13 Sapiro v. Ford | p. 192 |
| 14 Apology | p. 218 |
| 15 Apostle of Amity | p. 241 |
| 16 The Chosen People | p. 255 |
| 17 "I Am Not a Jew Hater" | p. 268 |
| 18 Hitler's Medal | p. 281 |
| 19 The Radio Priest | p. 293 |
| 20 Transitions | p. 309 |
| Afterword | p. 321 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 331 |
| Bibliography | p. 335 |
| Notes | p. 353 |
| Permissions | p. 395 |
| Index | p. 401 |
